On Monday, February 28th, we were lucky enough to be among 160 other TEDx curators and take a behind-the-scenes tour of TED2011 with Lara Stein, Director of Licensing at TED, and other TED organizers.

Our tour started with a visit to ancillary spaces sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, Google, Lincoln, Autodesk and Sony that provided everything the TED attendees could ever want to enjoy the conference from food and drink to technology and entertainment.

Later we attended a session where TED organizers explained the craft of storytelling, specifically for TEDTalks as well as PR guidelines when working with the press as a TEDx curator.

After this we explored the Media Cave, where all audio and video feeds for the event are directed and an intelligent group of producers work together to cut every single TEDTalk.

Then we went to the main stage where TED2011 would be held and received wonderful messages from Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, and June Cohen, the curator of TED.com.

We ended the evening with a great Food Truck Party where we met more TEDx curators as well as other TEDActive attendees. We were excited to see all the food trucks as it has been a movement in Cleveland for quite sometime by Dim and Den Sum a creation of Chef Chris Hodgson. This trend is also starting to grow in Cleveland with such great companies as Phoenix Coffee.